Some critics believe so and are determined to legally restrict the sale of violent video games to minors, despite some significant practical and constitutional hurdles.

These include the fact that, even if they can't purchase violent games, some kids will still find ways to play them; that many of the perpetrators of supposedly game-linked violent acts were over 18 and wouldn’t have been affected by proposed video game laws; and that such legislation has an 0 for 9 record in federal court challenges.

And yet, the anti-game laws keep coming. One would think there’s an epidemic of violence in this country. One would think that as video games have grown in popularity, violent crime has gone up.

But it hasn’t.

Take a look at this nifty chart we came across on Wired earlier this week (although, truth be told, we’ve seen this chart before. In fact, GP saw it mentioned by Dr. David Bickham of Boston’s Center on Media and Child Health at Penn State last week, although Bickham downplayed its significance).

Using data from the U.S. Department of Justice, the chart plots the rate of crime victimization per 1,000 citizens over the past couple of decades. Superimposed over the graph are several violent games, depicted chronologically by release date. One will notice that where DOOM is introduced the line graph takes a nose dive and continues falling all the way through the releases of Postal, Mortal Kombat, and GTA.

Neat, eh? Of course, the data is pretty broad. It encompasses many types of violent crime such as robbery and simple assault, includes all age groups above 12, and details victims instead of offenders. What violent game critics would likely be more interested in is a graph plotting the number of juvenile homicide offenders over the years.

So we poked around the DOJ a bit and dug up this, a graph of homicide offending rates by age. Looking at the graph, one will see that murders committed by 14 to 17-year-olds peaked in 1993 (again, DOOM) and started to fall from that point reaching their lowest level recorded by 2002.

Does this prove that games haven’t caused an increase in youth violence? No, and social scientists would scoff at such an over-simplistic comparison, due to the many factors at play in crime and violence. After all, who’s to say that without violent games the precipitous drop in youth violence over the last decade and a half wouldn’t have been steeper?

Still, despite the alleged harmful effects of violent games, the number of youth homicides has been on the decline for many years now. It makes one wonder what's really driving some critics' urge to legislate games.

Comments

Australia, yes, but they still ban extremely violent games... cause they don't have an R18 rating yet...so a game comparison wouldn't work that well...

Western Europe no, they joined together into one great alliance and have had a vast change to laws and populations(members can't prevent immigration... which is a huge change from their anti-immigrant policies) and a vast change in beliefs... The US cannot be compared to this since we had a stable 50 states formation for a while and have had large amounts of immigrants since the founding of this country...

So while looking at Australia for games which they did release is useful, the main nation which we can compare the statistics to is Canada...

Actually this type of simple comparison really doesn't mean anything significant, and we certainly can't say video games have caused the decline. Still it does provide empirical evidence that there has not been any type of increase in violent crimes during the period in which these games entered the market. And in fact we see here that we know that violent crime has decreased during this period. But while this comparison isn't particularly useful, we already know that the evidence we have thus far suggests that playing violent video games does not lead to any type of significant increase in violent behavior or propensity to commit violent crime. This comparison just provides indirect empirical validation of this.

Actually based upon what we know about crime, it is likely that video games have had very little impact on the crime rate one way or the other. However I would not go so far as to say that the popularity of violent video games, along with other violent media, has had no net impact on our culture. But, at the same time we just can't at this point in time reliably connect exposure to violent media and violent behavior.

My 13 year old son came home from school yesterday extremely upset that he was verbally attacked for having dreadful parents that allowed him to play violent games. The fact he stood up and aired his opinion that he was a well balanced stable kid who comes from a loving family, has had top grades throughout school and also has a number of hobbies paid for by his hard working parents, his teacher still compared him with two teenage child killers. Im livid that nothing gets more attention than people blaming outside influences for their problems. My son has never been smacked or subjected to abuse and has the confidence and respect for his friends and teachers. Anyone with a normal train of thought knows that kids who kill dont come from happy loving homes, but hey if we can put it all down to a game then it gets their abusive parents of the hook.

[...] Naturally, Grand Theft Auto’s release has re-ignited public debate over how games affect kids and whether new laws are needed to protect children from the gratuitous violence found in many video games. GTA has been a favorite target of politicians for the past eight years, and the usual suspects like Jack Thompson and Tim Winter have predictably spoken out against GTA IV. But parental controls are more robust than ever, as Adam has documented, and some have even suggested that kids should be playing Grand Theft Auto. Despite the recent explosion in hyper-realistic violent games, violent crime rates have been dropping across the board. Maybe games like GTA are just another harmless outlet for kids to express violent behavior, much like playing cops and robbers. [...]

It's per 1000, it is essentially an average. As a population grows, you'd still expect the percentage to stay the same. Note how previous years to Doom's release, when there would have been equally consistent population growth, the results stay roughly the same. Population growth wouldn't affect the graph, not least because the DOJ wouldn't have misleading tables in their records.

Infophile: @Matt: Apparently Dan Aykroyd actually is involved. We don't know how yet, though, but he's apparently going to be in the movie in some way.08/02/2015 - 4:17am

Mattsworkname: I still hold that not having the origonal cast invovled in any way hurts this movie, and unless the 4 actresses in the lead roles can some how measure up to the comic timing of the origonal cast, i just don't see it being a success08/02/2015 - 12:46am

Mattsworkname: Mecha: regardless of what you think of it, GB 2 was a finanical success and for it time did well with audiances ,even if it wasnt as popular as the first08/02/2015 - 12:45am

MechaTama31: I think they're better off trying to do something different, than trying to be exactly the same and having every little difference held up as a shortcoming. Uncanny valley.08/01/2015 - 11:57pm

MechaTama31: Having the original cast didn't do much for... that pink-slimed atrocity which we must never speak of.08/01/2015 - 11:56pm

Mattsworkname: Andrew: If the new ghostbusters bombs, I cant help but feel it'll be cause it removed the origonal cast and changed the formula to much08/01/2015 - 8:31pm

Andrew Eisen: Not the best look but that appears to be a PKE meter hanging from McCarthy's belt.08/01/2015 - 7:34pm

Mattsworkname: You know what game is a lot of fun? rocket league. It' s a soccer game thats actually fun to play cause your A Freaking CAR!08/01/2015 - 7:02pm

Mattsworkname: Nomad colossus did a little video about it, showing the world and what can be explored in it's current form. It's worth a look, and he uses text for commentary as not to break the immerison08/01/2015 - 5:49pm

Mattsworkname: I feel some more mobility would have made it more interesting and I feel that a larger more diverse landscape with better graphiscs would help, but as a concept, it interests me08/01/2015 - 5:48pm

Andrew Eisen: Huh. I guess I'll have to check out a Let's Play to get a sense of the game.08/01/2015 - 5:47pm

Mattsworkname: It did, I found the idea of exploring a world at it's end, exploring the abandoned city of a disappeared alien race and the planets various knooks and crannies intriqued me.08/01/2015 - 5:46pm

Andrew Eisen: Did it appeal to you? If so, what did you find appealing?08/01/2015 - 5:43pm

Mattsworkname: Its an interesting concept, but it's not gonna appeal to everyone thats for sure,08/01/2015 - 5:40pm